The present invention relates generally to an instructional aid, and more particularly to an instructional aid having a plurality of objects, each with a color reflecting the number represented by the object, which are useful in clarifying and solidifying the concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, understanding the relationship between prime and composite numbers, and improving number skills and memory. The basic concept of adding two numbers together to obtain the sum, or multiplying two numbers together to obtain the product, has been well known in the field of mathematics for a long time. While many methods are used to teach and understand these concepts, the most common method is to memorize the addition and multiplication tables.
While conventional methods such as memorization may be satisfactory for some students, many students have difficulty grasping the concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, notwithstanding the availability of such tables. The reason is that the memorization method generally presupposes that a student has already grasped the crucial concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Moreover, multiplication tables fail to provide the student with a means for understanding the relationship between prime and composite numbers and yet these concepts are important to a basic understanding of multiplication and division.
Methods which do attempt to teach the concepts of number, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division often fail to supplement the abstract aspects of these concepts with visual and tactile experiences. Accordingly, there is a real need in the art for an improved method and corresponding means for teaching these concepts to persons with learning disabilities. Especially needed are means which not only aid in teaching the addition and multiplication tables but which also give a basic understanding of number synthesis and which reinforce that understanding with visual and tactile experiences.